Is This Photo Doctored?: Cold Start

Today, in our modern world of HAM radios and toothpicks made of advanced polymers and gene splicing, it’s not surprising that we likely expect any photographic image we see to be the product of some advanced, computer-based image manipulation. You can’t ever really trust that a picture is an unaltered, genuine photograph anymore. What about back in 1978, though? Could you trust the images you saw then? I think more so than now, but there was still photographic fakery happening, and I think this cover from a 1978 Plymouth Volare brochure may contain an example.

Can you see what I’m talking about? It’s not on the car itself, which I think is being presented in all its accurate, Volare-ic glory.

Here’s the full page if you want to scrutinize it more closely:

See what I’m talking about? No? Maybe? Well, regardless, I think it’s this bit:

Yes, the dude excited by the stack of seven ice cream scoops on one cone, listing nervously to the left. So here’s my suspicion: physics, as we understand it, and as it was understood way back in 1978, does not allow for such an ice cream stack. The slippage between scoops is just too great, especially in the partially-melted state we see here, and it is my theory that those ice cream scoops were added to the photo via old-school X-acto knife and airbrush techniques, or, perhaps, those ice cream scoops are not ice cream at all, but rather some clever facsimile, and held in place with some hidden rod or dowel.

Repeated calls to the Plymouth HQ just got me a tired-sounding woman telling me, repeatedly, that the Plymouth Division has been closed since 2001 and can I please tell someone at Chrysler they need to let her out of the office, so I got no insight there.

That model there is really acting up a storm, though, looking absolutely thrilled about that tower of ice cream, which is, perhaps, the “Super Scoop” advertised on that window.

The Volaré – whose name is taken from the Italian infinitive “to fly,” but, significantly, without the accent – was a soft, pretty half-assed attempt from Chrysler to make a compact car, which – and I’m speaking from direct experience here – drove on the highway like a wallowy turd cascading down a river of sewage in a sewer pipe, if you’ll allow me to be poetic.

There was a popular song at the time called Volare, sung by the guy in this commercial:

Want to hear the whole song now? Sure you do!

Oh, yeah, baby, that’s the stuff!

Anyway, back to Volarés. One thing I did kind of like about this car – and other cars of the era – was the willingness of carmakers to just really dress up the same car in some wildly different, um, costumes. Like, for example, the coupé version of the Volare could be had like this, nice and reserved and staid and respectable:

…though for some reason ice cream dork is still here, surrounded by adoring ladies and still absolutely wowed by that…triple-scoop cone:

I mean, they’re all really amused by it, including blondie in the back there, looking on with quiet but satisfied approval, while everyone else seems to be inspired to laughter.

Okay, back to the cars, though. So, you can get that same, reserved Volaré coupé in this form, too:

Look at that! slats over the rear quarter windows, a likely useless spoiler, fantastic stripes, the works! These things had the same sorta-anemic Slant-Six engines as the other variants, but they were just treated to stripe kits and plastic stuff glued to the car which did definitely change the character of the car. Silly, sure, but kinda fun, too.

Oh, and I also have to donate props to Plymouth for being an early American adopter of amber rear turn indicators:

They weren’t the first American car to use them (the Ford Mustang II gets that credit in 1974 if you don’t count the Excalibur, which used amber-equipped VW taillights in ’73) but they were one of the few to do so in the ’70s, and I appreciate that.

I’m still skeptical of that ice cream, though.